Two woman out of the group of refugees: „Yeah O!!“ „Da true!“
Returning refugee: „My people it is time to go home. There is no place like home. Home sweet home. The refugee business here will end soon.“
“I used to be a business woman in Liberia, but it all changed when the war reached the countryside where I was living in 1990. I was hiding with my family, my husband and my three children in the bush, but it wasn’t save there, there were rebel group coming into the countryside, searching for people. So we fled to Monrovia, trying to escape from there to another country, but by the time we arrived there, the war reached the city as well. It was the time, when Samuel Doe was captured and killed by Prince Johnson and shortly after Charles Taylor arrived in the city as well, and it all resulted in intense fighting. It was during these shootings, that I lost my husband and two of my children, while we were trying to escape the killings, but they were shot in a house in Monrovia. I escaped with my one child left to me and was rescued by ECOMOG forces, I think they were Nigerian soldiers, who brought me to their basis.”
C.R., Bububuram Refugee Settlement
The photo above on page 138 (and the following ones) show the preparation of the distribution of material, which the successful graduates of Woman empowerment schools were about to receive from a variety of perspectives: The first photo on the previous page shows women waiting outside the school building, in which the distribution ought to happen.
These women have successfully mastered classes for example in backing, cooking or sewing.
The distribution of material (such as flower and baking soda, garments and needles), as a reward for the successful accomplishment and as a starting mean for becoming
entrepreneurial figures themselves, ought to have started early in the morning. Due to late arrival of the responsible NGO members, women have been waiting outside on the street for hours, chatting and discussing, being nerved and yet laughing in between.
The photo shows the heads of the woman empowerment schools inside the building, amongst the commodities to be distributed. They have also been waiting, but firstly, after they gathered at one of the schools and then jointly moving to the distribution center.
The photo shows the gathering of the woman, who have been waiting out on the street around the NGO representative, who tells them with few words and without any further explanation, that the distribution will not take place this day and that they are to be informed about process in the future.
“The first time I arrived in Ghana, it was in Accra. We arrived with a boat from Ivory Coast, me and my wife and our daughter, 5 months by that time.
From Accra, the Ghanaian Government carried us to a refugee camp in the western region. First we only had tents, but the UNHCR later on built houses for us. After the election [in Liberia], we went back, thinking that the war was over. We were repatriated by the UNCHR, we were travelling on the road. We came back to Paynesville [a suburb of Monvoria] in 1997. […] We had to return to Ghana in 2002, when the war reached Monrovia again”.
A.S., camp inhabitant
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Camp inhabitants are waiting for the arrival of staff members of the UNHCR, which are arriving from Accra on a twice a week schedule. The office, in the buildings in the background, is closed at this moment. People are waiting to discuss the conditions and possibilities as well as possible support from the UNCHR regarding their repatriation.
Outside the offices, shadowing few benches with white UNCHR tents, a waiting space and area is created. The shade is shifting with the sun, moving and hence organizing the movement of the people waiting outside. They are surrounded by a fence, which separates them on the inside of the camp from the outside around them. Yet, through the fence, from the street, camp inhabitants are clearly visible, the offices themselves remain closed to the outside. UNHCR staff is arriving two hours late, due to heavy traffic, as one of the UNHCR members later on in an interview states.
“If life was really normal, it would not be something to be really proud of.”
J., camp inhabitant about his shop on the border of the Buduburam refuge camp
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“Yes, I am being very nicely dressed, I have to do this for office work from Monday until Thursday, only on Friday, I can be casual.”
C.Y, camp inhabitant, working for the Camp Management
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Photo showing the inside of the office space of the neighbourhood watch group; a member of the neighbourhood watch group shows the uniforms they are using, while patrolling or guarding the camp gate. The colours are held in blue and brown, clothes have been donated and are now used as a uniform for the Neighbourhood watch group, which guards the camp entrance and patrols the camp at night. The payment for their services is better food rations and treatment, which would otherwise only be accessible for, in the humanitarian language,
groups of most-vulnerable people, such as woman, children, elderly, disabled, etc. as well as better access to decision makers on the camp side.
A photo of a poster, warning camp inhabitants that they are to be arrested for false visa, false birth certificates, and false bank statements. Such openly displayed legal warnings, reminders of ´rightful´ behaviour and control sheets for ought to ought not to be done, are an incremental, reoccurring and omnipresent way of addressing camp inhabitants.
Above a photo of an information sheet, which announces a ”profiling exercise” (i.e. the collection of photos, finger prints and personal data) for camp inhabitants. The photo displays the interconnection between International Organizations (i.e. UNHCR) and National Camp Management (i.e. the Government of Ghana) on the one hand, but also hints at the impossibility of rejecting certain policy measures, as well as linking those to the discursive practices of humanitarian speech (e.g. “durable solutions”) and also the pressure
mechanism, which come along the announcement and execution of policy practices.
“When I first fled from Liberia, we were living in a forest, later on we got tents from the UNHCR and the Ghanaian government, At this time,
relationships between the refugees were good, we were helping each other and organized water and food distribution. The camp changed over time, people started to build houses, around 1991 – 1993. And some think of themselves as refugees, others think of themselves as migrants, others are asylum seekers by now. I am an asylum seeker, I just received my official card; the status is better than being a refugee. “
S.K., camp inhabitant
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Closely related to conceived space, we shall understand the vignettes above as examples or metaphors of perceived space; as a translation, a reiteration and re-enactment of the ordering practices of dominant forces, which perpetually organize and enact the camp. These spatial practices can be seen (and heard and felt) as an echo of the Representations of space
described and outlined in and as conceived space. A cartoon, displayed at a public space within the camp, turns into a translation of the policies of camp administration and international community: the narrating voice becomes one of a returning refugee, while the content of the speech displays the politics of International Community and of the Ghanaian Government (refuge’s should be returning). Instead of an obvious forceful way for this message to be perceived, it is hidden in the notion of a potential last bus or plane to leave, which ought not be missed). The personal (his)stories of fleeing are stories of subordination into perceived spaces and hence become a personal enactment into the dominant spaces of society and spatial
practices (running away from war, turning onto a ship, entering camps, repatriation and again, fleeing and entering camps). The position of advancing the repatriation of refugees is being told through themselves:
Ironically, many of the refugees I have talked to, had returned to Liberia after the end of the first civil war, following the calls and organization of the
former camp management and the assessment of the situation in their home country by the International Community. After having experienced a second
fleeing after the breakout of the second Liberian civil war in the early 2000´s and after returning to Buduburam (a camp, many have stayed before), the willingness to return is limited and the ever-present signs and documents stating political stability and an outlook for prosperity upon returning to their country of origin are perceived critically and with doubt. Waiting outside an UNHCR office in a designated waiting space as well as the use of the street (which can be used by NGO SUV´s) as a space for waiting for hundreds of women decisions to be made by NGO administration for hours in the sun are a spatial externalisation of the politics of the camp; defining and showing dependencies and hierarchies within the camp and a (re)structuring and production of the policies through space: The space of waiting transforms itself through the movement of the sun and the hence the shade; people move, benches become more or less inviting as a space to remain. The signs and symbols and colours of International Organizations, the blue and white of the UNHCR frame, differently and yet similar to the people working and representing such organizations, the camp inhabitants. Refugees waiting outside the container office buildings, which are both, manifest and temporal in themselves, are waiting on a different level: steps have to be climbed to enter the offices whenever they are opened to them. Numerous spatial practices and enactments of orders, laws and regulations through space can be seen, ranging from the uniform giving out the Neighbourhood watch group as a camp-like policing unit (patrolling the camp and guarding the gate in three shifts), to warnings of illegal activities and legal status and the changes which of such status. Such differentiation of status and the
impossibilities of shifting one selves from refugee to asylum seeker ensure a continuity of the social: A perception of the everyday within the camp,
ensuring the social ordering and order within the space of the camp: A shop, a small business, is not then not just an enterprise, but also serves as a constant reminder of the exceptional situation (and space), within which and through which the shop is being erected.